No, mainstream media, Bernie Sanders in NOT dropping out

In 2008 Obama didn't have enough delegates until the last vote. Hillary won
the popular vote but not enough delegates. After the last vote was counted, she didn't concede until two days later.
Let the last vote be counted in 2016 before anyone starts talking about a
contested convention or dropping out of the race and endorsing their opponent — or
we can talk more about an Independent run.

And then Clinton can launch a two-pronged assault and pivot to Trump and
Sanders at the same time. At least that would be a lot more interesting.

The very same Democratic Party and corporate media that squeaked the relatively
unknown Senator Barack Obama to an eventual victory over the world renowned Hillary Clinton
in 2008, is the same Democratic Party and corporate media that is backing
Hillary Clinton in 2016 and working overtime to defeat Senator Bernie Sanders.
The fact that Sanders is doing as well as he is (and without the superPACs that
both Obama and Clinton had enjoyed in 2008, or the support of the mainstream
media) tells us two things:

Hillary Clinton is a piss-poor candidate to run against the GOP.

Bernie Sanders is, by far, the best candidate to run against the GOP.

If Bernie Sanders ran against Trump or Cruz in November, and if he had the
same support from the Democratic Party and corporate media that Clinton is now
getting — and with his current supporters — Sanders would most likely beat
any GOP candidate by a landslide this November.

Otherwise, without Sanders supporters, and because Clinton doesn't poll as
well as Sanders against GOP candidates, running Clinton as the Democratic
nominee is taking a huge and unnecessary gamble of losing the White House to a
Republican. Not only that but, the Democrats also risk not taking back the House or
Senate either, because voter turnout would be lower in November.

But the well-established political insiders within the Democratic party may
be so stubborn that, if they lose White House, they will probably blame Senator
Bernie Sanders for dividing their party, even though millions of his supporters aren't even
Democrats.

As it is now, neither Bernie Sanders nor Hillary Clinton will most likely have enough
pledged delegates to officially qualify for the Democratic nomination after the last
vote has been cast in Washington D.C. on June 14th. Which means, it will be a
contested convention, because Bernie Sanders has given no indication that he
will drop out — but the media and Clinton's supporters insist on having
this conversation now.

When recently appearing on CNN, a Sanders supporter and political analyst Nomiki
Konst debunked the ridiculous myth of Hillary Clinton's eventual inevitability — and an early end of Democratic primary race. (She explains in video below.)

All along, the Democratic party and the DNC and the media has been trying to rig the
primary against Sanders — and in the event that it might have ever gone to the convention,
they've also been busy rigging that against Sanders as well. From
the New York Times:

The institutional bulwarks against Mr. Sanders are significant: Hundreds of the party’s “superdelegates” have endorsed Mrs. Clinton, a signal of her broad support among the party’s power brokers. The Democratic National Committee now relies on Mrs. Clinton’s fund-raising to provide a fifth of its monthly income, an arrangement the Sanders campaign has criticized.

And Mrs. Clinton is well positioned to block any proposals she would not want to defend in a general election. In January, the party chairwoman, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, appointed dozens of Clinton supporters and advisers to the three standing committees of the Democratic Party convention. Of 45 potential members submitted by Mr. Sanders, she appointed just three, according to Mr. Sanders’s campaign.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut, a top Clinton surrogate, will be co-chairman of the platform committee. Barney Frank, a former Massachusetts congressman and fierce critic of Mr. Sanders and his Wall Street proposals, will be a co-chairman of the rules committee, which governs procedure on the convention floor.

Mark Longabaugh, a senior adviser to Mr. Sanders, questioned how Ms. Wasserman Schultz had chosen her discretionary appointments. “Not only are they supporting Clinton, but they have been extremely critical of Bernie Sanders,” Mr. Longabaugh said. “That doesn’t seem like the right way to go if we want to have a convention that is evenhanded.”

The Wall Street Journal
reported: "Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday adopted a more conciliatory tone toward Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, pledging to do whatever it takes to stop Republicans from winning the White House. ... The change in tone also comes as Mr. Sanders — who has sought to paint Mrs. Clinton as a stooge for Wall Street and special interests — faces increasing calls to drop out of the race at the risk of damaging the party’s best chance to win the White House."

First of all, Bernie hasn't changed his "tone" — and Clinton IS a stooge for Wall Street and special interests.

Secondly, only establishment Democrats, Clinton supporters, and Clinton's media stooges have been asking Bernie Sanders to drop out of the race early, especially as his popularity climbs and before the biggest State of California even votes. Bernie's supporters (the only ones that really matter) don't want him to stop until he's in the White House.

Lastly, when Bernie says "I will do is do everything that I can to make sure that somebody like a Donald Trump, or some other right-wing Republican, does not become president of the United States" — it doesn't mean he'll drop out and support Hillary. It means, because he has a better chance than Clinton of beating any GOP candidate, he'll do everything he can as a presidential
candidate to beat any GOP candidate.

On NBC's Meet the Press (video below) Bernie Sanders said: “There’s not a question whether
if we are going to continue, we are going to continue. We’re going to fight this out until the last vote is cast. That’s what democracy’s about."
NOTE: Bernie Sanders never indicated that he would surrender all his votes to Clinton, and/or
that he wouldn't take the fight all the way to the convention.

Did you notice how the pundit in that interview was trying to corner Sanders
into making an endorsement for Clinton — to "unify the party" by
possibly dropping out of the race early? This is the typical media — not reporting news — but attempting to influence public sentiment and influence the election to get a candidate
elected that is most favorable to their own corporate interests.

One potentially key tell was on display in the four interviews that Sanders gave yesterday to the Sunday Shows: One on ABC, one on CBS, one on NBC, and one on CNN. In every one of them, Sanders repeated variations of the formulation:

“We’re going to take our campaign through California.”

“We intend to take the fight all the way through California.”

“We’re in this race to California.”

“We’re going to fight for every last vote until California and the D.C. primary.”

In other words, Sanders promised to battle until the final votes are cast, which he has every reason and incentive to do.

But this appears less ambitious than what Sanders telegraphed only a week ago. Last Sunday he was asked directly whether he would take the contest “all the way to the floor in Philadelphia,” and he replied: “Yup.”

There are other signs the Sanders campaign is shifting its focus from such a last-ditch effort to win the nomination to an effort to extract policy concessions from expected nominee Clinton.

Democratic leaders are wary of steering the party too far left, but do not want to alienate the Sanders supporters whose votes Mrs. Clinton needs in November, or risk losing the vast new donor base Mr. Sanders has created.

Of course, one cannot dismiss the possibility that Sanders might still try to battle for the nomination on the convention floor. But all of the above is much more consistent with an endgame in which Sanders fights on until the voting is completed, makes one last push for super-delegates to switch, discovers they aren’t willing to do so, and then enters into serious unity talks over how he might influence the convention proceedings and the Democratic Party’s agenda in the fall campaign.

(* Or, he will listen to us and run as an Independent. Bernie or Bust)

.@maddow Ask #HRC what she thought about superdelegates in 2008 and how she feels now in 2016

.@maddow Obama wants TPP. Ask #HRC if there ANYTHING that would make her flipflop again and vote for the TPP trade deal?

.@maddow should ask #BernieSanders about lifting the cap for Social Security to expand and shore up trust fund..@maddow Ask #HRC if she thinks $250,000 a year is "middle-class"? Why not lift the cap? Median annual wage is $28,851.21https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2014

Hillary Clinton got a BIG pass with softball questions from MSNBC host Rachel Maddow -- part of the Comcast propaganda machine for the Democratic party -- so there were no surprises while watching their forum tonight. Earlier tonight in another MSNBC forum, Chris Hayes hit much harder with Bernie Sanders ... which Bernie handled very well.

"Charles Lane used his op-ed column in the Washington Post to repeat the line that is now quite popular in elite circles: the stagnating wages and worsening living standards of large segments of the U.S. working class were a necessary price for lifting hundreds of millions of people in the developing world out of poverty. Oh yeah, and also the richest one percent happened to get unbelievably rich in the process as well. So people like Bernie Sanders, who want trade policies that will help U.S. workers, are actually being selfish. It's the one percent who are really serving the poor."

Should Hillary Clinton be indicted by Donald Trump's new AG?

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Bud Meyers writes about the economy, politics, Social Security, corporate outsourcing, labor statistics, the REAL unemployment rate, taxes and tax evasion, government and corporate corruption, and the plight of the long-term unemployed.